SPRINGFIELD – Employers have wrung nearly all the productivity they can get from their current staffs and are poised to start expanding payrolls at the start of the new year, according to a survey released Thursday by Associated Industries of Massachusetts, a business advocacy group.

“Many employers are now doing pretty well,” said Andre Mayer, Associated Industries senior vice president for communications and research. “They will do anything they can to increase their output without bringing on new people. But the longer this situation goes on, the harder it is for them to contemplate going on without adding more help.”

Overall, Associated Industries' Business Confidence Index rose 3 points in August, from 52.2 points to 55.2. That’s one a scale of 1 to 100 where 50 is neutral.

The 3-point improvement continues a recovery from a 8.5-point drop in June to 48.3 points. Mayer now blames the June drop on a lot of bad economic news coming out at the same time he sent the survey forms to Associated Industries members across the state.

Associated Industries’ Employment Index rose 2.3 points on the month form 53.9 points in July to 56.2 points in August with 40 percent of respondents saying they have added new jobs in the last six months and just 14 percent reporting layoffs. In the next six months, 29 percent plan to add people and 12 percent foresee layoffs.

Mayer said he’s seen a consistent pattern where number of companies that hired over the past six months is always larger than the number of employers who had predicted hiring during that time period.

“The next six months always seem to be worse than the past six months and yet the real numbers never go down,” he said.

Also on Thursday, payroll processing company ADP said private companies added 201,000 jobs across the country last month, up from 173,000 in July.

Mayer said the next six months will bring some resolution to the question marks hanging over the economy. The election will be over. There will be clarity to the “fiscal cliff” situation in Washington. Mayer also predicts that the European fiscal crises will have worked its way towards a resolution.

“Even the Europeans can only stretch out the melodrama for so long,” he said.

Associated Industries said the confidence gap between Boston and the rest of the state widened last month. The confidence index in Boston was 57 points and the confidence index outside of Greater Boston was 51.8 percent. The gap was explained as a result of Western Massachusetts manufacturing base and the region’s reliance on federal defense spending.

Large employers were more confident than small employers no matter where they were headquartered, according to Associated Industries of Massachusetts.